Bwssb

Construction activities continue to encroach the drain that goes to Bellandur lake. Pic: Nikita Malusare The High Court of Karnataka on Monday, October 21, 2013, accepted the Public Interest Litigation against the Mantri developers and Coremind Software and Services along with other nine government departments. A bench comprising Justice K L Manjunath and Justice H S Kempanna directed that the defendants be served notices. Namma Bengaluru Foundation and Citizen Action Forum along with many resident welfare associations in and around Agara lake in south Bengaluru had filed a Public Interest Litigation (Writ Petition 36574/ 2013) on the Special Economic Zone…

While everybody else in the city were busy celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi last weekend, 73-year-old Sakuntala Narasimhan, who writes the column Civic Reflections for Citizen Matters, had a different task to do. She spent her weekend fighting the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) contractor and officials, urging them  to restore the sewage connection to her flat. Her connection was suddenly cut off without any prior notice from the BWSSB, who are on a drive to replace old sewage lines across the city. Sakuntala, a resident of Jayanagar 3rd Block, 27th cross, is unable to use the toilet in her…

Apartment associations that received their water bills for June 2013 were in for a shock. Their water bills were two to three times more than what they had been paying! Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) had increased the charges for bulk consumers as per a notification in the Karnataka Gazette dated 23rd May 2013, but most apartment association representatives and residents were not aware of either the new charges, or of the impact of the amendment in tariff, till they received the bills.  According to the new tariff rules, for Bulk Domestic Consumers i.e. High-rise/Multistoried Buildings/ Apartments/ Central and…

Ever so often, somebody makes the statement – that we need to have a right to water. You can substitute water with education, food, health or any other resource-dependent ‘right’ — the arguments are quite similar: that not enough people have sufficient access to it, that the lack of availability of the right was a fundamental human indignity, that it was likely against the fundamental right to life guaranteed by the constitution, and that it was high time the state did something about it. For better or worse, this has now resulted in Right to Education legislation, and will likely…

BWSSB's decision to charge higher water charges only from those who live in apartment communities but not from those who live in single family homes makes no sense, nor is it actually executable. There is a tendency in the agencies to impose higher expectations on those in apartment communities, and even this is done selectively (we are seeing this in SWM also, having to fight against such discrimination). Moreover, those who think up such things are always careful to exempt communities like LIC quarters and BSNL quarters and KEB quarters, because these are not 'private' apartment communities.I agree that BWSSB…

BWSSB Chairman Gaurav Das Gupta declared that the peripheral areas of Bengaluru do not and will not have water for the upcoming years. Gaurav Gupta was taken on by veteran bureaucrat, former additional chief secretary of Government of Karnataka, V Balasubramanian, in the discussion ­The Critical water situation in Bangalore- The way forward conducted by Bangalore International Centreat Domlur. Both of them discussed the alarming water crisis in Bangalore and its consumption. It was moderated by former chief justice of India M N Venkatachalaiah. In the wake of acute water crisis, BWSSB Chief told the gathering: “If you are taking…

17:39:38 Water water everywhere! Pic: Shree D N It was while hurrying back from Vijayanagar to Malleshwaram that we happened to meet this ‘all-time high,’ ‘10-cm’ record rain for Bangalore. Such a rain is not new to me personally - it was a regular during my childhood days, in my village in Kerala. And trust me, there were no unwanted incidents or accidents there, due to rain, except for occasional breaking of Areca trees. Both my husband and I, though stuck in a traffic jam, were enjoying the rain, sitting in the car. After 20 minutes, I got the first…

Bangalore's water crisis has been averted for now, with a newly-formed committee appointed to look into the water supply to the city. One tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet) of water will be diverted from Hemavathi river to the KRS dam; currently there is one tmc ft of live storage existing in KRS dam as well. "Together, this two tmc ft water will meet the requirement of Bangalore till monsoon. The water requirement of Bangalore is 1.2 tmc ft per month," says a senior BWSSB officer, on condition of anonymity. The committee to oversee the process, was appointed after a…

Amarjyothi layout, Domlur is supposed to be a very posh locality situated in one of the most busy parts of Bengaluru. There are over 500 sites spread almost equally on either side of the intermediate Ring Road from Indira Nagar to Koramangala south of the old Airport Road. Both the east and west wings of the layout are also neighbouring some of the most sought after landmarks in Bangalore. The east wing is surrounded by the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) and Royal Orchid hotel on one side and the Embassy Golf Links Business Park that houses some of the world's…

Ashok Niranjan is a software engineer at Accenture and a member of the Management Committee, in charge of water at Brigade Mayflower in JP Nagar. He is looking to adopt individual water metering. "We are just two of us (in our apartment) and out most of the day. We use less water but we end up paying as much as anybody else who is using lot more water than we do," says Niranjan.Niranjan realises the gravity of water consumption. After their initial successful rainwater harvesting project, he is committed to saving water.The 240-apartment Mayflower block gets a total water bill…